What does a product manager do

Cloud Strategy MeetingO c t o b e r X X 2 0 1 5

Sandeep Grover, SVP Global Ecommerce Feedzai

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Agenda

• What is Product Management• Do we need it• Startup vs Large Fintech• How is it different for B2C vs B2B

• How to be a successful Product Manager• How to organize to get the most out of it

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My Background

Work Experience:• More than 15 years of Experience – Engineering, Product, General Management• 3 Years at Amazon.com leading the Risk/Fraud Team• 3 Years at GoDaddy.com leading Products for Small Businesses• Currently, SVP Global E-Commerce at Feedzai, a machine learning based Risk

Management Startup

Education:• MBA, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, US• B-Tech Computer Science, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), India

Cloud Strategy MeetingO c t o b e r X X 2 0 1 5

Software is eating the world!

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What a Product Manager is not?

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Product Management connects the Outside w/ Inside

Product Management

Market• Current/

Prospective Customers

• Competition

Development Team

• Engineers, QA, Data Science

• Prod Marketing

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Product Management

Product Management = Deliver innovative solutions on behalf of a customer and create shareholder value for an organization

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Product Management


• Customer can be Internal (Other teams in a company) or External

• Lots of Customers (B2C) or Few (Enterprise)

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Product Management


• Organization can be Small (startup) or Large (Big bank)

• Any Industry Vertical (Internet or Fintech)

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Product Management

Product Management = Deliver innovative solutions on behalf of a customer to create shareholder value for an organization

• Customer has Pain Points but they may or may not know about it• Customer will most likely not know how to solve that pain point• If you ask them, they will give you a narrow solution• Product Manager validates and identifies the problem at hand• Product Manager will decide if the problem needs to be solved

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Product Management


• Solution - could be a product or service• Product Manager will use various tools to find the best possible solution

• B2C = User Surveys, Usability tests, A/B tests, analyze data• B2B = Talk to Customers, Sales, Customer Reps, Look at competition,

Research Reports• Product Manager will quantify the key metrics that the solution will drive:

• Could be user engagement, revenue, profit, more users or even making the engineers more productive

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Product Management


• Product Manager will be the champion and drive launches• Work with Engineers/QA/Technical Writer/UX to build a solution that meet the

requirements• Prioritize and make sure the most important stuff is delivered first• Communicate Progress to the Executive Stakeholders• Work with Legal to ensure compliance• Train the Sales people or Customer service people• Build and Manage the brand of the product

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Product Management


• Product Manager’s role is to create shareholder value by:• Prioritizing the right projects for the product and the company that would

result in:• Getting more users, retaining them, Generating more value per customer• Increasing topline, bottomline etc.• Driving Partnerships, Proposals, answering RFPs

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Product Manager: Examples of what they can do

Product Managers is a strategic and business oriented role, focused on delivering solutions to Market Needs:

PM:Identify opportunities that meet Market needs

PM:Launch Products into the Market; Find Product Market Fit

PM:Improve and Grow the product line to scale

PM:Oversee Existing Products in the Market

PM:Wind down products that no longer meet Market Needs

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Product Manager: How they will do it?

• Competitive Analysis

• Usability test• User Surveys• Conferences• Talk to

Competition Customers

• MVP Launch• Get Early

Feedback• Write Business

Requirements• Fail fast

• Maintain and track Metrics

• Growth Hacking• A/B Tests• Backlog Building• Documentation

• Metrics tracking• Backlog

grooming• Internal Exec

Reviews

• End of Life Products

• Work with Legal

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Product Manager : Summary

Lead TeamsAssess Opportuniti

es

Maintain/Wind down

Products

Drive Launches

Market: Customers

Internal Teams

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Product Manager Job/Titles can vary

• Product Managers can sometimes be called:• Program Manager (Internal facing product and is more execution focused

working with several cross company teams)• Technical Product Manager (PM in a Platform team dealing with APIs/SDKs)• Product Marketing Manager (PM focused on Go to Market for a white labeled

product)

• Role and Responsibility can vary by:• Industry/Company• B2C vs B2B• Startup vs Mature• Internal vs External Customers

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Example of a PM in B2C Companies

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Example of a PM helping Internal Teams

• At a Large company, four different teams are integrating with some code base at the function level – the team is maintaining 3 different version of code bases

• A savvy PM might realize that an API might better serve his clients• Starts socializing this with internal teams to get feedback• Teams like the idea but resist the change as there is work involved on their side as

well• Savvy PM builds a business case for it quantifying the cost/benefit for the company• Garners executive support for the project• Proposes timelines, executes and communicates progress to all stakeholders

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Checklist to become a good PM

What needs to be done and Why?• Make sure you are solving the biggest impact problem• Articulate the Value and Vision early on• Gather Exec Support early on to make sure its funded• Tools – Hear the Customers (directly, indirectly), Analyze Data, Don’t neglect CompetitionLeading Teams:• Cause the team to have a shared understanding of the Product – this should included extended

team such as Marketing, Legal, Sales, BD• Give People Problems/Questions/Hypotheses (What and Why) rather than Solutions (How)• Make yourself redundant• People should see you as the CEO of the ProductExecution:• Be there to answer any questions team may have on a daily basis• Fail Fast

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How to Organize to get the most out of PM

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How to Organize to get the most out of PM

BU Leader

Product Management Engineering Operations Marketing Sales

UX

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Q&A

Thank You

What does a product manager do

Career

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